As for the pirates, I like them, they have some rather unusual abilities as well as a few dirty tactics. Cloaking is very useful, even if only for escape, and the fighters seem stronger than any of the other sides since they can scatter buzz droids (and the fighters are quite fast). It's also amusing to fly a battered ship over to someone's star destroyer and kamikaze it, hehe.

In a way, it feels that most of the pirates' ships have a lot of utility, but aren't necessarily the most powerful in comparison to the Rebels and the Empire. That utility is a big advantage if you plan ahead, but you wouldn't want to rush in with a blitz of some sort.
I haven't really gone much into the ground battles yet, but from what I've seen so far they seem more tactical than before.
So who else has the expansion? What do you think?